Incredible!!! as if they had nothing more important to do!!!! - And anyways, if bake sales are the most popular way to raise money, it must be that it is the only one that works!!!  Fools!!

Hold the brownies! Bill could limit bake sales

By MARY CLARE JALONICK, Associated Press Mary Clare Jalonick, Associated Press 2 hrs 26 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Don't touch my brownies! A child nutrition bill on its way to President Barack Obama — and championed by the first lady — gives the government power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that health advocates say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunchroom.
Republicans, notably Sarah Palin, and public school organizations decry the bill as an unnecessary intrusion on a common practice often used to raise money.
"This could be a real train wreck for school districts," Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said Friday, a day after the House cleared the bill. "The federal government should not be in the business of regulating this kind of activity at the local level."
The legislation, part of first lady Michelle Obama's campaign to stem childhood obesity, provides more meals at school for needy kids, including dinner, and directs the Agriculture Department to write guidelines to make those meals healthier. The legislation would apply to all foods sold in schools during regular class hours, including in the cafeteria line, vending machines and at fundraisers.
It wouldn't apply to after-hours events or concession stands at sports events.
Public health groups pushed for the language on fundraisers, which encourages the secretary of Agriculture to allow them only if they are infrequent. The language is broad enough that a president's administration could even ban bake sales, but Secretary Tom Vilsack signaled in a letter to House Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller, D-Calif., this week that he does not intend to do that. The USDA has a year to write rules that decide how frequent is infrequent.
Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest says the bill is aimed at curbing daily or weekly bake sales or pizza fundraisers that become a regular part of kids' lunchtime routines. She says selling junk food can easily be substituted with nonfood fundraisers.
"These fundraisers are happening all the time," Wootan said. "It's a pizza sale one day, doughnuts the next... It's endless. This is really about supporting parental choice. Most parents don't want their kids to use their lunch money to buy junk food. They expect they'll use their lunch money to buy a balanced school meal."
Not all see it that way.
Palin mocked the efforts last month by bringing a plate of cookies to a school speech in Pennsylvania. Rep. John Kline of Minnesota, the senior Republican on the House Education and Labor Committee, said the federal government "has really gone too far" when it is deciding when to hold bake sales.
Some parents say they are perplexed by what the new rules might allow.
In Seminole, Fla., the Seminole High Warhawks Marching Band's booster club held a bake sale to help send the band's 173 members to this year's Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade in New York. One of the bake sale's specialties: New York-style cheesecake, an homage to the destination they'd pursued for 10 years.
"Limiting bake sales is so narrow-minded," said Laura Shortway, whose 17-year-old daughter, Mallory, is a drummer in the band. "Having bake sales keeps these fundraisers community based, which is very appealing to the person making the purchase."
Several school districts and state education departments already have policies suggesting or enforcing limits on bake sales, both for nutritional reasons and to keep the events from competing for dollars against school cafeterias. In Connecticut, for instance, about 70 percent of the state's school districts have signed on to the state education department's voluntary guidelines encouraging healthy foods in place of high-sugar, high-fat options.
Under those rules, bake sales cannot be held on school grounds unless the items meet nutrition standards that specifically limit portion sizes, fat content, sodium and sugars. That two-ounce, low-fat granola bar? Probably OK, depending what's in it. But grandma's homemade oversized brownie with cream cheese frosting and chocolate chips inside? Probably not.
One loophole in Connecticut: The nutritional standards apply if the food is being sold at a bake sale, but not if it's being given away free, such as by a parent for a child's birthday.
"If a mom wants to send in cupcakes to celebrate St. Patrick's Day, that would not be subject to the state guidelines," said Thomas Murphy, a spokesman for the state's education department.
In New York City, a rule enacted in 2009 allows bake sales only once a month, and they must comply with nutritional standards and be part of a parent group fundraiser.
Wootan says she hopes the rules will prompt schools to try different options for fundraising.
"Schools are so used to doing the same fundraisers every year that they need a strong nudge to do something new," she says. "The most important rebuttal to all of these arguments is that schools can make money other ways — you don't have to harm kids health."
___
Associated Press writer Stephanie Reitz contributed to this report from Hartford, Conn.

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A Crash. A Call for Help. Then, a Bill.

By CHRISTOPHER JENSEN
NYTimes.com
Published: September 3, 2010

ABOUT a year ago Cary Feldman was surprised to find himself sprawled on the pavement in an intersection in Chicago Heights, Ill., having been knocked off his motor scooter by the car behind him. Five months later he got another surprise: a bill from the fire department for responding to the scene of the accident.

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Steve Kagan for The New York Times

VICTIM Cary Feldman paid for the dispatch of a fire truck he didn't request.

“I had no idea what the fire truck was there for,” said Mr. Feldman, of nearby Matteson. “It came, it looked and it left. I was not hurt badly. I had scratches and bruises. I did not go to the hospital.”
Mr. Feldman had become enmeshed in what appears to be a nascent budget-balancing trend in municipal government: police and fire departments have begun to charge accident victims as a way to offset budget cuts.
Ambulance charges have long been common and are usually paid by health insurance, but fees for other responders are relatively new. The charge is variously called a “crash tax” or “resource recovery,” depending on one’s point of view. In either case, motorists are billed for services they may have thought were covered by taxpayers.
Sometimes the victim’s insurer pays. But if it declines, motorists may face threats from a collection agency if they don’t pay.
The AAA opposes such fees, said Jill Ingrassia, managing director for government relations and traffic safety advocacy. “Generally, we see that public safety services are a core government function that should be properly budgeted for with general taxes and not addressed by fees after the fact,” she said.
Ms. Ingrassia says such charges can place an “undue burden on motorists who can’t choose the size or duration of an emergency response,” which means they cannot control the size of the bill they may get. “We also really don’t want to discourage any motorist involved in a crash from calling for police or rescue services if they fear they are going to be billed for it,” she said.
Mr. Feldman received a bill for $200. The Chicago Heights Fire Department told him the fire truck had responded in case there was a fire at the scene.
But Mr. Feldman, 71, had another question: “Why are you charging me? I didn’t do anything wrong. Charge the other guy.”
Neither Mr. Feldman’s insurance company, nor that of the man who struck him, would pay. Mr. Feldman finally paid the bill with some of the money he received from the insurance company of the person who hit him.
“This is my personal opinion: it is a rip-off and a scam,” he said.
The Chicago Heights fire chief, Thomas Martello, referred inquiries to the mayor’s office, which did not respond to three phone messages in early August or to another on Thursday. (Mayor Alex Lopez died of a heart attack on Aug. 27. )
There appears to be no group that tracks the jurisdictions charging such fees or the number of bills sent. But police or fire departments are charging in at least 26 states, said Robert Passmore, senior director for personal lines at the Property Casualty Insurers Association of America. The group has lobbied against the fees, saying they amount to double taxation. It also says on its Web site, “The role of police and fire departments should be to serve and protect, not serve and collect.”


But Regina Moore, the president of Cost Recovery, a billing company in Dayton, Ohio, that tries to collect the fees for municipal departments, said property taxes paid for fire crews to be “on ready standby” and for police to “protect property and citizens from crime.” She argued that “traffic crash response is outside the scope of the primary function of both law enforcement and fire services.”
The people who cause the problems should pay for such services, she said, not other taxpayers or accident victims who are not at fault.
Jeffrey Johnson, president of the International Association of Fire Chiefs, said that some fire departments had charged for service calls for years, but that it was happening more often as departments tried to avoid reducing services.
“It is more prominent recently as economic times drive responders to look for ways to pay for their services,” said Mr. Johnson, who just retired as chief of Tualatin Valley Fire and Rescue in Aloha, Ore. People are accustomed to bills for ambulances, which are routinely paid by health insurance, he said. “So what we are really talking about is the leap from paying an ambulance fee, which people expect, to paying a first-responder fee.”
Mr. Johnson said the fire chiefs’ association had taken no position on such charges. “We believe that is a local decision,” he said.
But the association does have what it calls a partnership with Fire Recovery USA of Roseville, Calif., another billing company.
In an e-mail, Ann Davison, a spokeswoman for the fire chiefs’ association, said that relationship was focused on helping to explain the pros and cons of the practice to fire departments. Fire Recovery does donate “a portion” of its revenue to the association, she said.
Often departments charging fees are in communities with busy Interstate highways, where crews often respond to crashes involving travelers who do not pay local taxes, Mr. Johnson said.
That is the case with Salina, Kan., which responds to accidents on Interstates 70 and 135. In 2008, the city’s fire department received permission to start billing people involved in accidents to help cover costs, said Mayor Aaron Peck.
In about two years the department has sent out bills for 63 accidents, averaging about $390 each. He said the city sent about $10,000 a year in bills and received payments amounting to about half that much. The rest of the money is lost to the city because some people refuse to pay and some of the money goes to a billing agency.
The billing services make money by taking a portion of the funds they collect. “The average is 10 percent, and if they don’t get paid, we don’t get paid,” said Ms. Moore of Cost Recovery.
Rick Benner, chief financial officer for Fire Recovery, said that for his company about 20 percent would be “a fair representation.”
Billing agencies like these have made it easier for fire departments to charge for services, and that has the effect of encouraging more departments to send bills to motorists involved in crashes, said Mr. Johnson of the fire chiefs’ association.
The insurance industry argues that billing companies trying to drum up new business are a main reason the practice has been spreading.
But Mr. Benner says Fire Recovery is simply trying to help departments avoid service cuts.
Typically, departments send billing firms copies of accident reports and information on how many people and how much equipment responded. On average, the bill is about $200 for police and $600 to $800 for fire departments, Ms. Moore said.
Whether taxpayers are billed for crashes in their own jurisdictions varies by location.
There are also variations in whether the bill goes only to the motorist at fault or to all the parties involved, in which case the billing companies say the insurers determine fault.
If the insurance company refuses to pay, whether the motorist is billed depends on the jurisdiction, Ms. Moore and Mr. Benner said. If the motorist declines to pay, some departments drop the claim. Others take legal action.
Whether an insurance company will pay depends on the language in the policy, Mr. Passmore said, adding, “There are a lot of shades of gray.”
After adopting such programs, some jurisdictions — including Radnor Township, Pa. — later backed off in response to complaints from residents and visitors, news reports and lobbying by the insurance industry. In recent years 10 states have prohibited such collections, according to the property casualty association: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Tennessee. But some of those prevent only the police, as opposed to fire departments, from charging fees.
Ms. Moore of Cost Recovery says these are examples of “big insurance” working against “innocent taxpayers” and public safety.
The insurance industry says it is protecting consumers and trying to hold down premiums.
The finger-pointing has left cities like Denver trying to figure out what to do. This year, the city considered fees for nonresident, at-fault drivers, said Eric Brown, a spokesman for Mayor John W. Hickenlooper. Mr. Brown said the city stood to recover about $500,000 a year for fire services.
But the proposal was criticized by taxpayers and the media. In an editorial, The Denver Post described the idea as unfair and unwise, saying it would put taxpayers “financially on the hook for supporting emergency services twice.”
The city decided not to decide.
“We shelved it for this year,” Mr. Brown said.

A version of this article appeared in print on September 5, 2010, on page BU9 of the National edition.

A Crash. A Call for Help. Then, a Bill.

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Environment and Business Clash in Saint-Tropez - NYTimes.com

August 15, 2010

Environment and Business Clash in Saint-Tropez

By LIZ ALDERMAN

PARIS — Of all the places to part with fistfuls of money in St.-Tropez, few have more cachet than Le Club 55.
Perched on the white stretches of Pampelonne, one of the Côte d’Azur’s most stunning beaches, Le Club offers a private patch of sand where habitués can pay around $255 a day to rent a couple of lounge chairs with an umbrella and enjoy a light lunch — not including wine.
But that traditional St.-Tropez luxury is in danger of being upended there, and at 27 other clubs and restaurants that have catered for decades to famous Côte d’Azur visitors from Brigitte Bardot to Paris Hilton.
The mayor’s office says the establishments pose a threat to the environment. Officials have proposed dismantling existing beach amenities and shrinking the area allotted for private beaches to protect delicate flora and what officials say are dunes worn down by the crush of manicured feet. As a result, despite the August atmosphere of hedonism, an unusual air of rebellion is stirring in St.-Tropez, with businesses contemplating their first ever “strike.”
“It’s completely stupid — everybody thinks so,” said Patrice de Colmont, the owner of Le Club 55 and a leader of the local fight against the government’s plans.
“If we said buildings in Paris couldn’t be above a certain height you wouldn’t cut off the top of the Eiffel Tower,” Mr. de Colmont said. “Well, this is the Eiffel Tower of the French Riviera.”
The mayor is seeking a compromise, but has not backed down. The town hall at Ramatuelle, where Pampelonne is situated, is planning to open its doors, starting Monday, to receive comments from the public.
“We all want to be here for the long term,” said Guy Martin, the chief of staff for Mayor Roland Bruno. “That’s why we need to make sure there’s a sustainable equilibrium between the environment and the community.”
Like much in France, though, the dispute is not so simple. Opponents of the move claim that it is really an effort to clear the way for big, well-connected companies to move in on the local businesses’ turf. Officials respond that the ruckus being raised by Mr. de Colmont and his colleagues is mostly in defense of their own form of crass commercialism.
French law prohibits private development on public beaches. But decades ago, residents built on Pampelonne by obtaining renewable one-year permits that allowed them to offer “public services,” like Jet Ski rentals and lifeguards, if the construction was dismantled when the contract expired.
If applying annually for permits was a nuisance, it at least protected small business owners, since no large company was willing to put up with the risk of losing a substantial investment, said Carole Balligand, the chairwoman of Save Pampelonne, a group that represents the local businesses that are in danger.
From the government’s perspective, however, all the activity stemming from the permits has hastened the erosion of an important dune on Pampelonne filled with rare native plant species. In 1986, the French Parliament passed a law to restore the area. Four years ago it ordered those in the area to strike a better balance between the environment and commercial activity.
Under the government’s plan, the commercial operators would be allowed on 20 percent of the beach rather than 30 percent, meaning their plots would be reduced to 23 from 28. As for the dune, it would be cordoned off to let nature do its work.
Local people are upset at another proposal, to require commercial beach activities to end on Sept. 1 every year — still the high season — rather than sometime in October, and to allow new businesses that build behind the restored dune 10-year operating permits. That, they suspect, is less about protecting the environment than attracting mass vacation companies with deep pockets, like Club Med.
What is more, Mrs. Balligand’s group, after digging up photos from the Allied landing on Pampelonne beach in August 1944, contends that no large dune ever existed. She accuses the government of using environmental arguments as an excuse to bring in bigger businesses.
In summer, about 20,000 people frolic on Pampelonne beach every day. While Paris and Nicky Hilton, Tina Turner, Bono and a constellation of other stars frequent its playground, so have a number of international artists, intellectuals and politicians. Many mix with the coterie of low-key, wealthy local residents whose families were here well before Ms. Bardot put Pampelonne on the map in the 1956 French film “And God Created Woman.”
Before Ms. Bardot, St.-Tropez was more like the Saint-Germain des Prés quarter of 1920s Paris. It was an eclectic beach town that drew few rich people. These days, “the gulf of St.-Tropez is covered with yachts, pretty much all of which are registered in tax havens,” Mr. Martin said.
The prospect of losing those clients and their free-flowing cash has Mr. de Colmont alarmed. His private beach plot is small, but it has been the stuff of legend ever since Ms. Bardot and the director Roger Vadim came during filming to seek food at what was then an outdoor dining table set up by Mr. de Colmont’s father for his family.
Last Thursday, Mr. de Colmont called off his planned one-day strike, he said, after the mayor’s office gathered him and other residents to discuss the matter “more reasonably.” But he is not ruling out a shutdown if the government digs in.
As he presses his fight, Mr. de Colmont will have at least one heavy hitter at his side. “Joan Collins left me a message the other day to ask what she could do to support me,” he said. “She has proposed to come give her point of view” to the mayor.
Such celebrities, of course, attract plenty of gawkers. Mr. de Colmont wants to be sure that the riffraff doesn’t get out of control, scaring the big spenders away. On a recent day, he said, 300 clients paid to use the amenities on Le Club 55’s plot, while only 100 people sat on the larger public beach next to his. “I would prefer,” he said, “not to have Club Med people crowding out those who are already here.”

Environment and Business Clash in Saint-Tropez - NYTimes.com

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